Soccer has long been viewed suspiciously by conservatives.
Stephen Moore penned a philippic about the Beautiful Game in
National Review right before the World Cup four years
ago, labeling it “the Marxist concept of the labor theory of
value applied to sports.” A friend of mine who holds a high
position at the Manhattan Institute insists the game is simply
un-American. And a baseball coach of mine years back, who came
from a prominent right-wing political family in Wisconsin, was
adamant that soccer was being sent over by the Soviets to soften
us up for the coming invasion.
There may not be a stock position held by conservatives on the
sport, but it’s not much of an exaggeration to suggest that such
opinions are fairly common in right-wing circles. Given the
Democratic pandering to Soccer Moms in recent elections and the
occasional nativistic instincts on the part of the National
Review crowd, a conservative antipathy or even outright
hostility toward soccer is not surprising.
So what is surprising? How about the fact that the one
individual most responsible for the presence of soccer in the
United States at the beginning of the new millennium is a
mysterious billionaire who is poised to become the most powerful
conservative in America?
Major League Soccer (MLS) has struggled financially in its seven
years of existence. It is probably safe to say that the league
would no longer exist were it not for the support of Philip
Anschutz. He has an ownership stake in seven of the league’s ten
teams, and his willingness to bear losses estimated in the
hundreds of millions of dollars explains why MLS continues.
Who is Philip Anschutz? He’s the richest man in America most
people have never heard of. And he likes it that way.
As recently as two years ago the Denver-based Anschutz was listed
by Forbes as the sixth wealthiest person in America. His
reported $18 billion fortune has taken a quite a hit since then.
His stake in long-distance provider Qwest Communications has
plummeted in value recently, but Anschutz still has enough
billions left to keep comfortable.
Anschutz first made money from oil and gas in Western states and
showed his investment savvy when well fires were torching his
Wyoming oil fields in the 1960s. He called in legendary oil
firefighter Red Adair to quell the flames … and he also called in
Universal Pictures. He convinced Universal to pay him $100,000 to
film the fire fighting. They used the footage to great effect in
Hellfighters, a John Wayne movie about Adair.
A shrewd operator, Anschutz has dived into a number of diverse
fields. He’s the largest shareholder in the Union Pacific, the
biggest railroad outfit in the country. Anschutz controls the
right-of-way on nearly 20,000 miles of traintrack (along which he
has laid thousands of miles of oil piping and fiber-optic
cables). He is the third-largest shareholder in Qwest. He
continues to dabble in sports. In addition to his MLS holdings,
Anschutz owns the Los Angeles Kings (hockey), a 25 percent stake
in the basketball Lakers, and a host of different sporting arenas
and stadiums.
Soccer aside, those are profit-making ventures to be sure. His
financial interest in American soccer, on the other hand, appears
to be the one part of his portfolio that is done purely on a
lark, a sentimental subsidy from someone who doesn’t want the
sport to die and is in the position to do something about it.
Soccer may not be the only area where sentiment intrudes upon —
or at least informs — Anschutz’s investment decisions. He isn’t
merely a successful businessman, he’s a successful businessman
who happens to be a committed conservative. Anschutz gives lots
of money to the Republican National Committee and to GOP
candidates, he’s friendly with fellow oilman George W. Bush, and
he’s supported opponents of controversial gay rights and drug
legalization referendums.
So you can imagine the sense of horror that must be spreading
through the quarters of the latest industry to attract Anschutz’s
attention: the movie business. Hollywood is as reliably liberal
and Democratic as any community in America. But recently Anschutz
has been infiltrating the movie and entertainment world with an
aim to change both how it operates and the fare it puts
out.
Over the past few years Anschutz has quietly gone about
purchasing debt in troubled movie exhibitors like United Artists,
Edwards Theatres, and Regal Cinemas. Before any of them knew it,
Anschutz was the largest debtor, and in bankruptcy proceedings
and debt restructuring negotiations he was at the front of the
line. Bottom line: Anschutz now controls one out of every five
movie screens in America, more than any other company.
Anschutz hopes to make a killing by bringing a digital delivery
revolution to the movie business, wiping out the high costs of
things like projectors (as well as projectionists). But more
importantly, perhaps, he hopes to change the content of many of
Hollywood’s offerings. Already his entertainment company is
developing positive-message films and family fare to counter the
prevailing coarseness of American entertainment.
Philip Anschutz is not your typical billionaire. He’s not
self-aggrandizing. He doesn’t tout himself to the press. In fact,
he hasn’t granted a media interview in a quarter century.
For these reasons some have tried to make him out to be a weird
billionaire recluse, like Howard Hughes. But unlike Hughes,
Anschutz is by most trustworthy accounts a regular guy, a good
family man married to the same woman for decades. He’s known for
his humility, his abstemiousness (doesn’t drink much), and —
gasp! — his churchgoing. This last fact was considered
newsworthy enough by London’s left-wing Guardian
newspaper that its headline on an item about him read,
“Churchgoing Billionaire Who Rises at 4:30 A.M.”
These are not the values prized in left-wing enclaves like
Hollywood. But Anschutz has enough savvy, money, and power to
overcome this handicap. In the coming decades he will likely be a
major force in La-la-land as he intensifies his foray into the
movie and entertainment industry. There is a huge market for
entertainment that doesn’t degrade or offend, and Anschutz is
positioning to be one to provide it.
But more than that, it seems, Anschutz is moving into Hollywood
for reasons that suggest a sort of conservative noblesse
oblige. Life isn’t all about money; it’s about doing the
right things with it. In this respect Philip Anschutz may turn
out to be one of the most important culture warriors the country
has seen.
Will the shy Philip Anschutz be a household name ten years from
now, the way Michael Eisner is today? Maybe, maybe not. But the
betting is good that in ten years Americans will view Philip
Anschutz in a way that they do not view Michael Eisner —as the
new Walt Disney.
